1. Technical Field
The invention relates to a charging member, a process cartridge, and an image forming apparatus.
2. Related Art
In an image forming apparatus using an electrophotographic method, charges are formed by causing a charging device and the like to charge an image holding member (electrophotographic photoreceptor), an electrostatic latent image is formed by using laser beams which is obtained by modulating an image signal, and then the formed latent image is developed by using a charged toner so as to obtain a toner image. The toner image is directly transferred or is transferred through an intermediate transfer member to a recording medium, and thus a required image is obtained.
In this image forming apparatus, a non-contact type charging device such as a corotron and a scorotron has been known as the charging device. The non-contact type charging device performs charging by using corona discharge which occurs by applying a high voltage to a conventional metallic wire. However, recently, a contact type charging device using a charging roll has been widely used instead of the non-contact type charging device, generally for the reason of a low voltage to be applied and a small amount of generated ozone.